


what the Lady gives

by Eisoj5



Category: Snow Queen Series - Joan D. Vinge
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:36:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisoj5/pseuds/Eisoj5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after the events of The Summer Queen, who controls their own fate?</p>
            </blockquote>





	what the Lady gives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cyphomandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/gifts).



TIAMAT: 

Only the dark heads of distant mers marked the line between sea and sky as Gundhalinu helped load the boat on the morning of its departure. "Are we're overthinking this?" Reede muttered to him, winding the end of a monofilament line on a reel and handing it down to Ariele. 

Gundhalinu smiled wryly. "I don't think anyone would dare accuse the lot of us as overthinking anything," he answered. He lifted his gaze to the rest of his family and friends, assembled on the dock. 

"I would have appreciated the extra help when we set out, all those years ago," Moon said gently. The memory carried her voice away like the wind. 

“All this extra technology, it’s not blasphemous to the Lady?” 

Gundhalinu eyed the man once called the Smith suspiciously, caught the sardonic twist to his mouth. Ariele slapped at Reede’s arm. “Technology in the service of the Sea Mother,” she said. “And you’re hardly one to question _that_.”

He grinned at her, and then up at Gundhalinu. “I doubt our friends on Kharemough would see it that way.” Gundhalinu opened his mouth to retort, but thought better of it. He had certainly received plenty of signals from the inner workings of Survey that Moon’s insistence on integrating Summer traditions was still not well-received by all, newfound principles of self-determination aside. 

“All right, this boat’s loaded more than enough for a month’s sail,” Jerusha proclaimed, strolling down and tossing in one last container, probably dried stores of food and not technology, judging from the casual way she lobbed it down. “He’s anxious to set off, and all this milling around’s only making it worse.”

Gundhalinu gave his hand to Moon, then Ariele, as they clambered back onto the dock. Reede smirked and leapt out past him—not nearly as sprightly as he once might have, but then, none of them were young anymore. Youth, and all its fleeting glory, was walking down the path from the house, embodied in Gundhalinu’s grandson.

“I wanted to review my tests on the computer one more time,” Ilmarinen said, meeting his assembled kin at the water’s edge. “I kept thinking, what if they made a mistake?” 

“The Sibyl College doesn’t make mistakes,” Moon reassured him. 

Gundhalinu saw Reede mouth _Not anymore!_ silently over the top of Ariele’s head. 

“Your genetic receptability for the sibyl virus was well studied and thoroughly analyzed by not only the College, but your father.” Moon inclined her head slightly to Reede, whose smirk broadened, but kept her luminous gaze on Ilmarinen. Her push for genetic testing had gone against traditional Summer beliefs about the mystical, spiritual call of the Goddess—yet another in the long line of political moves that Moon had delicately balanced for so long. But the desire to increase Tiamat’s access to the universe had won out, as had the knowledge that it was no longer death to be a sibyl, or love a sibyl . . . 

“And you’ve been to the Pit—” 

Ilmarinen shuddered. His expression of dread was uncannily similar to the one on his father’s face. 

“So you’ll do fine,” Moon finished, stretching up to kiss his forehead. 

Gundhalinu clapped their grandson firmly on the shoulder and redirected the conversation. “You’ve got a long way to sail, Ilmarinen,” he said. “You’ve downloaded the storm reports to the onboard nav?”

Ilmarinen nodded. “And I’ve gone over the star charts a hundred times with Mama and Gran,” he added, fondly clasping Moon’s hand in his own. 

"Give our love to Clavally and your Aunt Merovy when you get there," she murmured.

“You’d best be off, then,” Jerusha said. “Look—Silky’s waiting to escort you.” She pointed, and they all looked to where the mer was trilling softly to itself just offshore. A half dozen more mers bobbed up beside her, gazing back at the humans with their dark, unfathomable eyes.

Ariele smiled at her son. “Call it a blessing from the Sea Goddess on your journey.”

*****

It was two and a half weeks later that Gundhalinu awoke in their room in the palace, the unmistakable call of Transfer pulling him down into a darkness that was not sleep.

(Grandfather?)

(Ilmarinen.) He felt gratitude to the sibyl mind wash over him. (You are the Lady’s chosen,) he thought, ritually.

(I never imagined it would be like this . . . ) Ilmarinen said, his voice a shadow of thought.

(It isn’t always. You’ve gone into a mutual Transfer—didn’t Clavally explain?) Gundhalinu held back his own confusion. 

(No—! I—she mingled my blood with her own, and then I was in the Nothing Place— _Mother of us All!_ ) 

(Moon would tell you the Lady works in strange ways,) Gundhalinu murmured ruefully. He had wondered, once, at how his grandson stubbornly adhered to Summer curses, despite Reede’s expansive dictionary of obscenities from other worlds. (Ask, and perhaps She will give you an answer.)

A sigh that was not a sigh. (Tell me about Ilmarinen, then? My ancestor— _our_ ancestor.)

Gundhalinu, suddenly understanding, laughed, in the depth of the sibyl mind, and where he lay half-dreaming in the palace he knew Moon stirred at his side. He laughed as he had done when Reede told him the name he and Ariele had chosen for their child, feeling joy, and honor, and sorrow for all that had been lost. (I thought She had done with us all and turned us loose into our own fates,) he said. There was no escaping the machinations of a universe-spanning mind, after all. . .

But then he saw what Moon had described to him, when he had come back to Tiamat his own man again: the luminous net of a million pearls strung throughout the universe. The star map of inhabited worlds, each one marked by its sibyls.

(Why has She chosen to show this to me?) Ilmarinen whispered. (I thought only Gran knew the coordinates—)

Gundhalinu had no answer at first, as he gazed at what the Old Empire had wrought, and destroyed, trying to hold on to the picture of it. 

(I think,) he said at last, (that it is an invitation to the descendant of Her architects and grandson of Her avatar, to seek out the rest of our long-lost kin.) 

*****

Somewhere in the space between worlds:

_”No further analysis.”_

Ilmarinen came out of Transfer, out of the Black Gate, to the sound of his crew’s voices raised in congratulation. He stared out the screen to see their target, a pale blue dot growing steadily larger on their approach. The heart of the Old Empire, long forgotten, but never truly lost. 

“They’re signaling,” someone told him, and he turned to hit the comm switch. A voice speaking careful Tiamatan, heavily accented, but tinged with amusement and excitement, said, “Welcome, strangers far from home.”

Ilmarinen smiled. “The universe is home to us all.”

**Author's Note:**

> I love The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen dearly, and this was a wonderful opportunity to spend some more time on Tiamat. I hope it is to your liking, and happy holidays!


End file.
